Coconut Roughs

First of all...THESE ARE THE BEST THINGS EVER. Coconut Roughs are...flakes of coconut and chocolate. There's a shop (which my closest one CLOSED DOWWWN.) which only sells it in the winter, and is quite pricey (honestly not that worth it actually). But what if I want it summer?. Apparently it needs to be cold or something? Well. So...I'm tackling coconut roughs in very, very warm weather.

Chocolate and Caramel Tarts

Does anyone else dislike condensed milk? Well, I hate it. I can hear my mum now, telling me, "Don't say hate, it's a very strong word". Well, I haaaate it. Sorry if you do like it though. I don't find it disgusting, I just find the milk powdery taste rather...overpowering.  Buuut...I like caramel? Besides there are those recipes that boil a can of condensed milk for about 5 hours, and then have to wait for it to cool so it doesn't explode. I'm making it from scratch. Hey, I think it's likier to fail this way (i.e. crystallisation)...but I like the flavour a lot better and it's faster. I also don't own a candy thermometer and I've always bluffed my way through these recipes...they always work.

By the way, I was searching up pictures of caramel tarts...and I just wanted to say that I don't want to see soft ganache style chocolate and runny caramel. I want a chocolate topping that SNAPS and caramel that is not runny, not chewy/hard but just right. It should provide (I sound kinda formal here?) that slight resistance when you bite into it and teeth marks will be visible and...combine that with the flaky pastry and... I wanna another one.

Profiteroles (choux à la crème)

Light-as-air choux pastry filled crème patisserie with hints of vanilla dipped in melted dark chocolate... What can I say? Absolutely drool-worthy.

Okay, so the first and second attempts I made at choux pastry puffs were rather... dismal. The first time... it deflated slightly and wasn't very airy and the second time? Well, it deflated completely and stuck to the baking paper underneath and was as flat as...an ironing board. Oh, and it was quite soggy too. So, this time what did I do differently? My wise words of the day, "Forget any recipe on the internet and let's WING it" And it went PERFECTLY.

Double Chocolate Raspberry Muffins

This is not one of those muffins which are super light and airy. PLEASE DO NOT BE MISTAKEN. These muffins are more like brownie-muffins... In fact, these are almost based on my brownie recipe. But with cocoa powder instead of chocolate because there was no chocolate on hand. There is also quite a bit of butter... Not to mention, it's a one bowl recipe!

If you have a look at the ingredients, you'll see that there is a generous amount of sugar. It's not actually that much, because you need to keep in mind that we're using cocoa powder. Another thing to note, is that I'm using regular cocoa (since I can't seem to find any Dutch-processed cocoa around here...NOOOO!) and this will affect the rising of the muffin. You would need to add baking soda. How much? Unfortunately, I don't know since I've never worked with Dutch-processed. In fact, the final result actually (sort of) looks like it uses dutch-process.